"Your Gateway
to the
History of the Mountain State,
1939-2006"

Volume 58 is now available!

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Volume 58 of West
Virginia History will interest Civil War historians and
genealogical researchers alike. Thousands of West Virginians served
in local state militia and home guard companies, protecting Union
property and pursuing Confederate guerillas. Their role in the war,
as well as postwar efforts to compensate these citizen-soldiers and
document their service, are surveyed in a short introduction.
Information compiled on members of companies in four counties
Barbour, Boone, Braxton, and Brooke includes rank, unit, company,
age, and other remarks on military service. The list contains names
from the West Virginia State Archives online militia database.
Researchers will also find a large number of additional names
extracted from records of the West Virginia State Service
Commission, created in 1901 to examine claims for compensation by
members of these local units. Information found in these latter
records is made available for the first time in this issue of
West Virginia History.

The impact on West
Virginia of late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century
industrialization is the subject of two other offerings in Volume
58. In Clarksburg and Moundsville, the growth of the glass industry
attracted significant numbers of foreign-born workers, who altered
the ethnic, cultural, and political character of the two
communities. Other parts of the state experienced industrial
development in different, but equally profound, ways. In
Transforming the Appalachian Countryside, Ronald L. Lewis
examined the impact railroad building and large-scale lumbering had
on the state's backcountry regions. During the 1999 Appalachian
Studies Association conference, a group of scholars critiqued
Lewis's book. Their comments appear in this issue.

West Virginia
History also looks at U.S. Senator Peter G. Van Winkle and his
role in the impeachment trial of Andrew Johnson. Van Winkle was one
of a small group of Republican senators to vote with Democrats and
Johnson Conservatives for the president's acquittal.

Since 1939, West Virginia History has featured some of
the best scholarship on the economic, political, social, and
cultural history of West Virginia and the Appalachian region.
West Virginia History also reviews the latest books on state
and regional history. West Virginia History, Volume 58, is
available for the subscription fee of $12 per year in the U.S. or
$15 per year outside the U.S. To receive your copy, return the
order form with your check or money
order. Checks or money orders should be made payable to "West Virginia Archives and History"
and sent to Archives and History Section, The Cultural Center, 1900 Kanawha Boulevard
East, Charleston, WV 25305-0300. Many back
issues are also available.